She simply bowed her head.
“You mean it? Oh, Denise, you cannot mean it?”
“I have reflected and I mean it.”
“For always?”
“Yes.”
André stepped nearer. “I do not remind you, Denise,” he said, speaking with a composure won by a mighty mastery of himself, “that I love you, that I have loved you since I could love any woman. If you would not believe it before I was taken prisoner, when I spoke in the woods of Versailles, you would not believe it now. Nor do I remind you that twelve months ago you spoke very differently. A lover and a gentleman does not speak of these things when the answer has been ‘No.’ But I do ask you, before you say ‘No,’ always to remember that it was the wish of your dead father and of mine that the answer should be ‘Yes.’”
“My father died five years ago, yours even longer,” she answered.
“Do the years alter their wish?” he asked, with a touch of passion, “do they make a promise, good faith, honour, less a promise, less——”
“There was no promise,” she interrupted.
He bowed calmly. The gesture was better than speech.